


help me hold onto you

by acollectionofdaydreams



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Implied Queliot, Post Season 4, and some good eliot and margo bonding, basically margo getting to talk about what she went through in s4, but q is back, eliot and margo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2020-11-25 16:22:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20915018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acollectionofdaydreams/pseuds/acollectionofdaydreams
Summary: There's a lot unspoken between Eliot and Margo, and some of that finally comes out one night post-monster when they're sleepy and a little bit tipsy.





	help me hold onto you

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks allegria23 on tumblr for the prompt! I agonized over how to write this because it just didn't feel right when I tried to write them having a traditional heart to heart. In my mind, this is kind of the first step to a lot of things they'll eventually discuss a lot more. I hope I did the idea justice anyway!

It was a quiet night in the penthouse, which was something Eliot was growing to appreciate more than he ever had in his life. He and Margo were on an extended Earth vacation due to Fillory being essentially a totalitarian war zone and also 300 years in the future. It was complicated. They were working on it. But after weeks of getting Quentin back and working on Fillory and a grueling physical recovery for Eliot, they’d settled themselves down for an evening dedicated to nothing but wine and Battlestar Galactica. No monsters, no dark kings, no quests. Just Eliot, Margo, and Quentin, who had fallen asleep on Eliot less than two episodes in, bless him. 

He was recovering too. He was still tired a lot of the time, something he blamed on his new medication, and Eliot couldn’t bring himself to wake him. So he’d extricated himself from underneath him, tucked the blanket they'd been sharing around him, and joined Margo on the opposite sofa. 

He and Margo had mostly been doing their best to make sure there wasn’t a drop of wine untouched from the bottle of rosé that sat on the table in front of them. However, Eliot wasn’t quite up to his old stamina levels either and had been drifting closer to sleep for the better part of the last episode. They’d started with Eliot’s head in her lap and her feet propped up on the coffee table. Now though, she was curled up on the sofa with Eliot’s head pillowed on her thighs and her hand carding gently through his curls, which was only helping to lull him closer to sleep.

It had been awhile since he and Margo had really had any time to themselves. When Eliot had woken up in the infirmary, it had been pretty much the worst possible scenario imaginable from all angles, and every moment since then had been an act of survival. There was only so long they could go like that before it all came crashing down, and that moment had been looming ever closer with each passing day. 

A lot had gone unspoken between the two of them over the last several years. There was always some bigger problem, whether that was the beast or the wellspring or the fairies or really just take your pick. They were Eliot and Margo though. They were untouchable. Or they had been once upon a time. All of that, however, was nothing compared to the last few weeks since Eliot woke up. Margo was… different. He’d heard bits and pieces from Quentin, enough to gather that she’d been through a lot in his absence. Margo herself had been like a steel trap though.

That’s why he was surprised when just as he was beginning to feel the warm and heavy clutches of sleep pulling at his subconscious, Margo’s voice cut through the fog and startled him awake. 

“I’ve missed us,” she said.

He jumped just the slightest bit at the sound of her voice in the mostly quiet room, but she didn’t react if she noticed. She just continued stroking her fingers through his hair and carried on.

“Sometimes I think we haven’t really been us since the beast showed up,” she said, “and then I start to wonder. If we haven’t been us for that long, then who are we, El?”

Eliot knew intrinsically that he was not meant to respond to that question. Margo was speaking in a quiet soft way, more as if she were talking to herself than to him. Like maybe she thought he had dozed off after all. That wasn’t it though because she knew him better than that. She was aware he was awake, he was sure of that, but he thought maybe that was the point. So he exhaled slowly and didn’t move a muscle as she dug her fingernails into his scalp to lightly massage it.

“I thought maybe we’d be okay after we got magic turned back on. Then we could figure out the Fillory shit and finally get to just be us again, you know? But then I woke up after Fogg’s memory wipe spell and you were gone, and I…”

She trailed off into silence. 

When she spoke again, it came out small and broken, “I thought I’d lost you forever.”

Eliot couldn’t help himself at that. He pushed his head back into her hand, not unlike a cat does while being petted. She froze with her fingers clutched in his curls. There was a tense few seconds while neither of them moved until Eliot nuzzled his head back against her thigh and counted his breaths. He got to three before Margo resumed her gentle caress.

“I don’t know what got into my head,” she continued, “I should have stayed here. I should have helped Quentin. He never gave up on you, you know, and the monster wouldn’t leave him alone. It was like Q was his favorite little pet or something. And I felt bad for him, but I just couldn’t be there. Watching that thing look at me from behind your eyes was truly the worst thing I’ve ever seen, El. I don’t know how Q did it. I think it was just easier for me to think you were gone for good than to go around thinking you were stuck in there with no way to get you out.”

Eliot opened his eyes just enough to glance at Quentin asleep a few feet away. He looked so young and so tired curled in on himself like that. He really had been so brave. Eliot hadn’t gotten much out of him when it came to details of his time with the monster, but Julia had filled him in on some parts he kind of wished she hadn’t. It’s not like being possessed was a walk in the park for Eliot, but the toll it had taken on the people he loves was something he was still coming to terms with. It had nearly cost him everything.

“Anyway, that’s why I ran I guess. And being in Fillory was… well, you know how Fillory is. There’s always some new disaster to fix. Fen was full-on hysterical over you when I told her. You should have seen her,” she snorted out a small laugh before continuing, “She literally piled all of your clothes on top of herself and just laid under them for like, a whole day. Between her and Rafe crying over that damn sloth, I thought I was going to kill someone. Then there was Josh.”

Ah, yes. The Josh of it all. That was something Eliot was still trying very hard to understand. Really, he was. But _Josh_? Of all people?

“I couldn’t save you, and I couldn’t help Quentin. Josh though, he felt like a problem I could fix. It was reckless as hell, Eliot. I swear you’re like 80% of my impulse control sometimes, and that was one of those times when I really could have used your level head. I mean, I can’t have P in V sex with anyone else unless I want to pass on lycanthropy to them. What the fuck?”

Yeah. Eliot had a lot to say about that particular incident. He’d already promised her they’d work on finding a cure, and that was a promise he intended to keep. If she wanted to be with Josh, then that was whatever, but she didn’t deserve possibly the worst magical STD that anyone had ever heard of because of it. Like hell was he going to let her ever experience a quickening. Which again, what the _fuck_ was up with that?

“Anyway, Josh proved to be useful in getting you back at least, so I owe him for that. If he hadn’t gone digging and found out about those magical axes, we’d all probably be dead by now. Though I think I’ll claim most of the credit for my little desert interlude.”

The desert part was the one Eliot was most curious about if he was being honest. He’d gotten the cliffnotes version from Quentin, which was that Margo had apparently stolen the axes from some misogynistic nomad tribe and had fucked up a lot of dudes up in the process. That was all very Margo, but he got the feeling there was a lot more to the story. And he was, of course, right.

“I think I’m still processing everything that happened there. It was. Exhilarating. And terrifying,” she said.

Eliot felt her body tense around him, and she got a little rough with her fingers in his hair before settling back into a slower rhythm.

“For the record, if you ever feel the urge to lick a talking lizard, probably just don’t. That little shit had a half life like uranium,” she laughed.

Which. What the fuck?

“Seriously, El. I know we’ve both done our share of hallucinogens in Ibiza, but I was tripping for like two whole days from one drop. As if being dehydrated and stuck in the Fillorian version of The Handmaid’s Tale wasn’t enough, I had to deal with your ass following me around singing 80’s pop anthems too.”

She laughed quietly to herself, and Eliot raised an eyebrow at the coffee table in front of them in lieu of turning around and questioning her. Which was a monumental act of self control because he had a _lot_ of questions.

“That night I spent digging in the sand for those goddamn black pebbles almost broke me. It was like I was laid bare. Like the desert winds and the sand had carved and scraped away at me until there was nothing left but just me. Me and all of my inadequacies,” she said lowly.

She continued, “I lost my shit, El. In a big way. You and I… we’ve got all this armor wrapped around us, and I think maybe that’s why we work the way we do. We don’t have to explain ourselves to anyone, especially not to each other, because we get it. But strip it all away, and who are we then? What’s left?”

Eliot understood that particular sentiment a lot more than maybe she realized. Once upon a time, in a timeline that never happened, he’d faced his own reckoning. There was only so long in past Fillory that he’d been able to maintain the illusion of Quentin’s fabulous, mysterious friend from Brakebills before the layers started falling away, and it had been terrifying. 

Fortunately for him, he’d found a soft place to land. By the time his hair was coming in grey, he didn’t even recognize the image he’d built in his twenties when he looked in the mirror. He’d grown comfortable in himself and the life he’d built. And Quentin had stayed and loved him every step of the way. He risked a glance over at Quentin again, feeling a rush of gratitude for the man who had been his life partner in every sense of the word.

Margo, though. She hadn’t had that. She’d been alone and afraid and at the end of her rope. 

“I gave up our kingdom,” she said somewhat disbelievingly. “It was never a question if it meant saving you, of course, but walking away from Fillory was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I think being High King was the last thing holding me together, and when it was gone, I was just so angry. Seriously, I’ve never been that angry, El. At you for getting possessed, at me for failing at saving you, at Fillory for everything I’d lost, at the whole goddamn world.”

He shifted just a bit, and she sighed above him.

“It was worth it though,” she said forcefully. “I would do every bit of it again to get you back because… I need you.”

Her voice broke on those last three words.

She drew in a ragged breath, betraying the emotion she was holding back.

Quietly, she said, “I can’t do this without you, Eliot. I know people say that when they really just mean that they don’t want to, but I mean it. I couldn’t do this without you. Any of it. And I also don’t want to.”

“I love you,” she said softly. 

Margo’s free hand was resting on the sofa next to his head, and Eliot took a chance then and lifted his hand to cover it. She was still and quiet for a moment, but then she flipped her hand over to squeeze his. He sighed and threaded their fingers together. She went back to stroking her hand through his hair as she settled into the sofa cushions. Eliot nuzzled his head against her leg and focused on the screen in front of them again. He only managed to pay attention to a few minutes of whatever episode was on before he drifted off.

**Author's Note:**

> Leave me a comment if you liked it! I'm eliotapologist on tumblr if you wanna find me there. Thanks!


End file.
